Alberta Commercial General Liability Insurance

Why does my Alberta business need general liability business insurance?

Here are some typical examples of where commercial liability can arise:

• You have customers who visit your workplace. If you run a retail store, you will have people coming and going. The more customers, the higher the potential that someone might injure themselves while on your property. Something as simple as a recently mopped floor or a spill could cause a customer to slip and fall, injuring themselves and/or damaging their property. This could result in a costly lawsuit, which, even if you are not found to be at fault, would be expensive to defend.
• You provide goods or services to customers at their premises. You are a plumber who runs your business out of your home office. All your work is done at your customers’ premises. You leave some tools lying around when you go on a break and the homeowner trips over the tools and injures themselves. Your customer could not only refuse to pay but you could be served with a Statement of Claim which you need to defend.
• You manufacture products for sale to retailers. You manufacture a widget that you supply to a retailer. Mr. X buys your widget from the retail store and once he gets it home and plugs it in, it explodes, causing damage to his kitchen and injury to his right hand. As the manufacturer, you will definitely be named (along with anyone else in the supply chain) in the lawsuit that he brings for damages, pain and suffering caused by your product.
• You employ people for your business. As an employer, you are responsible for the actions of your employees while they are doing their work. For example, you are a restaurant owner who employs a staff of servers. While carrying food to a table, one of your servers trips, spilling hot food on a customer, causing serious burns to the customer’s arm and ruining her expensive jewellery. Your restaurant would be faced with a lawsuit.
• You advertise your business. Let’s say you run an advertisement in a local paper claiming your product is superior to a competitor’s. In this ad, you suggest the competitor is using inferior materials. The competitor could sue you for making libelous statements.
• You employ security personnel. Your over-enthusiastic security guard thinks he sees a teenager pocket something in your store and grabs and detains the teen. The teenager’s parents sue you for false arrest. Many different types of businesses may employ security personnel – retail and hospitality are just a few. They’re often there for a reason, and, unfortunately, any interaction they have with the public can lead to litigation.
• You rent out space for your business. You own a coffee shop in a strip mall. One of your kitchen appliances over-heats and catches fire, which quickly spreads. The fire damages the building as well as other tenants’ property in the mall. The mall and other vendors could sue you for damages.

As these examples illustrate, a lawsuit could arise under a number of different scenarios.